Books - 6 days 12 hours ago
Looking for the Best Series of 2020? Disney Plus Says: This Is The Way.
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Submitted by Critical Blast Staff on Tue, 02/09/2021 - 07:49
When Critical Blast first published, we tried to create a category for every form of entertainment medium. A natural choice seemed to be television -- if you didn't see a movie in a theater or on home video, that seemed to be the default option.
Even when we began our annual reader-decided awards, "Best Television Show" seemed a natural category, even with streaming services firing up. But now it just seems strange to call it that -- anachronistic even, particularly in a year where not a single traditional broadcast network garnered enough votes for any series to make a sizeable showing in our results. Streaming has done to serial entertainment what crowdfunding has done to comic books -- it's widened the field of choices and the competition has gotten fierce.
Marvel and DC Comics both make a showing this year -- Marvel for its translation of their Son of Satan comics as Hulu's Helstrom, and DC for their brilliant work on DC Universe's Stargirl.
But the superheroes fell away to the calculating mind of Netflix's chess-based drama, The Queen's Gambit, which earned 8% of all votes cast.
The supers made a rousing comeback, this time from Dark Horse Comics. The Umbrella Academy, in fact, took the second top spot in this year's votes, nabbing 11% of all ballots cast.
There was no photo finish in this race, however, as readers responded with near unison that the best serial entertainment for 2020 came from new streaming outlet, Disney Plus. Star Wars: The Mandalorian made a forceful showing with an astounding 63% of all votes cast. For networks and creative teams out there looking for how to grab an audience and hold it, clearly -- this is the way.
